The Bitcoin Effect: Social Sentiment on Elon Musk Turns Negative After Tesla Disallowed BTC Payments

Elon Musk’s debacle with the cryptocurrency community over BTC’s energy consumption levels has turned people against him, revealed a recent report. A company tracking social sentiment has outlined a significant reversal in social media engagements, with the majority taking a negative approach towards Tesla’s CEO.

Elon Musk Sentiment Goes Into Negative Territory

It’s safe to say that Elon Musk is among the most influential people these days. The billionaire runs some of the largest and most notable companies by day and impacts entire markets by tweets.

The cryptocurrency space is not exempt as Musk has propelled double-digit moves with a few words on multiple occasions.

Since earlier this year, Tesla’s CEO has shown quite the controversial approach – from regretting not buying bitcoin years go, to bashing the asset for its energy usage. Oh, and the EV-maker he manages bought $1.5 billion in BTC, sold a few hundred million, enabled and then disabled bitcoin payments in the meantime.

It appears that this changing attitude has harmed his popularity. Citing data by the sentiment tracking company Awario, Yahoo Finance reported that the positive-to-negative tweets about Musk had reached a new low in May, approximately at the time BTC, and the entire market, started dumping in USD value after his tweets.

In comparison, the ratio was somewhat equal in January and went well within a positive territory after Tesla’s BTC investment became known to the public.

“Elon is wading into an area that’s maybe not the best of statements to make because the fact of the matter is bitcoin is the future of digital currencies, it’s the root of it. But I think it’s a very dangerous area for Elon to get in when he’s causing people losses like he did the other day, and it turns people against him and ultimately Tesla.” – commented Tesla investor Ross Gerber.

Musk Advocating for Clean Bitcoin Mining

Musk’s main criticism against bitcoin is that most of the mining is supposedly still coming from coal fuels. Although many experts have disputed this narrative and reports claiming that over 60% of the mining is from renewable sources, Musk believes the process needs to become even more eco-friendly.

Moreover, the billionaire seems to actually strive for such a development by meeting with the leading BTC miners in North America. After the event, hosted by popular bitcoin proponent Michael Saylor, all parties formed the Bitcoin Mining Council to promote energy usage transparency and accelerate sustainability initiatives.